Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

A POPULAR OUTLINE

X. THE PLACE OF IMPERIALISM IN HISTORY

We have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is
      monopoly capitalism.  This in itself determines its place in
      history, for monopoly that grows out of the soil of free
      competition, and precisely out of free competition, is the
      transition from the capitalist system to a higher socio-economic
      order.  We must take special note of the four principal types of
      monopoly, or principal manifestations of monopoly capitalism,
      which are characteristic of the epoch we are examining.

Firstly, monopoly arose out of the concentration of production
      at a very high stage.  This refers to the monopolist capitalist
      associations, cartels, syndicatess, and trusts.  We have seen
      the important part these play in present-day economic life.  At
      the beginning of the twentieth century,monopolies had acquired
      complete supremacy in the advanced countries, and although the
      first steps towards the formation of the cartels were taken by
      countries enjoying the protection of high tariffs (Germany,
      America), Great Britain, with her system of free trade, revealed
      the same basic phenomenon, only a little later, namely, the
      birth of monopoly out of the concentration of production.

Secondly, monopolies have stimulated the seizure of the most
      important sources of raw materials, especially for the basic and
      most highly cartelised industries in capitalist society: the
      coal and iron industries. The monopoly of the most important
      sources of raw materials has enormously increased the power of
      big capital, and has sharpened the antagonism between cartelised
      and non-cartelised industry.

Thirdly, monopoly has sprung from the banks. The banks have
      developed from modest middleman enterprises into the monopolists
      of finance capital. Some three to five of the biggest banks in
      each of the foremost capitalist countries have achieved the
      “personal link-up” between industrial and bank capital, and have
      concentrated in their hands the control of thousands upon
      thousands of millions which form the greater part of the capital
      and income of entire countries. A financial oligarchy, which
      throws a close network of dependence relationships over all the
      economic and political institutions of present-day bourgeois
      society without exception—such is the most striking
      manifestation of this monopoly.

Fourthly, monopoly has grown out of colonial policy. To the
      numerous “old” motives of colonial policy, finance capital has
      added the struggle for the sources of raw materials, for the
      export of capital, for spheres of influence, i.e., for spheres
      for profitable deals, concessions, monopoly profits and so on,
      economic territory in general. When the colonies of the European
      powers,for instance, comprised only one-tenth of the territory
      of Africa(as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able to
      develop—by methods other than those of monopoly—by
      the “free grabbing” of territories, so to speak. But when
      nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole
      world had been divided up,there was inevitably ushered in the
      era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of
      particularlyintense struggle for the division and the redivision
      of the world.

The extent to which monopolist capital has intensified all the
      contradictions of capitalism is generally known. It is
      sufficient to mention the high cost of living and the tyranny of
      the cartels. This intensification of contradictions constitutes
      the most powerful driving force of the transitional period of
      history, which began from the time of the final victory of world
      finance capital.

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for
      freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or
      weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful
      nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive
      characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as
      parasitic or decaying capitalism. More and more prominently
      there emerges, as one of the tendencies of imperialism, the
      creation of the “rentier state”, the usurer state, in which the
      bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds
      of capital exports and by “clipping coupons”. It would be a
      mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the
      rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of
      imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the
      bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser
      degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the
      whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but
      this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in
      general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in
      the decay of the countries which are richest in capital
      (Britain).

In regard to the rapidity of Germany’s economic development,
      Riesser, the author of the book on the big German banks, states:
      “The progress of the preceding period (1848-70), which had not
      been exactly slow, compares with the rapidity with which the
      whole of Germany’s national economy, and with it German banking,
      progressed during this period (1870-1905) in about the same way
      as the speed of the mail coach in the good old days compares
      with the speed of the present-day automobile ... which is
      whizzing past so fast that it endangers not only innocent
      pedestrians in its path, but also the occupants of the car.” In
      its turn, this finance capital which has grown with such
      extraordinaryrapidity is not unwilling, precisely because it
      has grown so quickly, to pass on to a more “tranquil” possession
      of colonies which have to be seized—and not only by
      peaceful methods—from richer nations. In the United
      States, economic development in the last decades has been even
      more rapid than in Germany,and for this very reason,
      the parasitic features of modern American capitalism have stood
      out with particular prominence. On the other hand, a comparison
      of, say, the republican American bourgeoisie with the monarchist
      Japanese or German bourgeoisie shows that the most pronounced
      political distinction diminishes to an extreme degree in the
      epoch of imperialism—not because it is unimportant in
      general, but because in all these cases we are talking about a
      bourgeoisie which has definite features of parasitism.

The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one
      of the numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous
      countries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to
      bribe certain sections of the workers, and for a time a fairly
      considerable minority of them, and win them to the side of the
      bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against all the
      others. The intensification of antagonisms between imperialist
      nations for the division of the world increases this urge. And
      so there is created that bond between imperialism and
      opportunism, which revealed itself first and most clearly in
      Great Britain, owing to the fact that certain features of
      imperialist development were observable there much earlier than
      in other countries. Some writers, L. Martov, for example, are
      prone to wave aside the connection between imperialism and
      opportunism in the working-class movement—a particularly
      glaring fact at the present time—by resorting to
      “official optimism” (à laKautsky and Huysmans)
      like the following: the cause of the opponents of capitalism
      would be hopeless if it were progressive capitalism that led to
      the increase of opportunism, or, if it were the best-paid
      workers who were inclined towards opportunism, etc. We must have
      no illusions about “optimism” of this kind. It is optimism in
      respect of opportunism; it is optimism which serves to conceal
      opportunism. As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and
      the particularly revolting character of the development ofopportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be
      durable: the rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body
      can only cause it to burst more quickly and thus relieve the
      body of it. The most dangerous of all in this respect are those
      who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism
      is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the
      fight against opportunism.

From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence
      of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism
      in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism. It is
      very instructive in this respect to note that bourgeois
      economists, in describing modern capitalism, frequently employ
      catchwords and phrases like “interlocking”, “absence of
      isolation”, etc.; “in conformity with their functions and course
      of development”, banks are “not purely private business
      enterprises: they are more and more outgrowing the sphere of
      purely private business regulation”. And this very Riesser,
      whose words I have just quoted, declares with all seriousness
      that the “prophecy” of the Marxists concerning “socialisation”
      has “not come true”!

What then does this catchword “interlocking” express? It merely
      expresses the most striking feature of the process going on
      before our eyes. It shows that the observer counts the separate
      trees, but cannot see the wood. It slavishly copies the
      superficial, the fortuitous, the chaotic. It reveals the
      observer as one who is overwhelmed by the mass of raw material
      and is utterly incapable of appreciating its meaning and
      importance. Ownership of shares, the relations between owners of
      private property “interlock in a haphazard way”. But underlying
      this interlocking, its very base, are the changing social
      relations of production. When a big enterprise assumes gigantic
      proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass
      data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw
      materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all
      that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw
      materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner
      to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated
      hundreds or thousands of miles from each other;when a single
      centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the
      material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of
      finished articles; when these products are distributed according
      to a single plan among tens and hundreds of millions of
      consumers (the marketing of oil in America and Germany by the
      American oil trust)—then it becomes evident that we have
      socialisation of production, and not mere “interlocking”, that
      private economic and private property relations constitute a
      shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must
      inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell
      which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period
      (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is
      protracted), but which will inevitably be removed.

The enthusiastic admirer of German imperialism,
      Schulze-Gaevernitz, exclaims:

“Once the supreme management of the German banks has been
      entrusted to the hands of a dozen persons, their activity is
      even today more significant for the public good than that of the
      majority of the Ministers of State. .. . (The “interlocking” of
      bankers, ministers, magnates of industry and rentiers is here
      conveniently forgotten.) If we imagine the development of those
      tendencies we have noted carried to their logical conclusion we
      will have: the money capital of the nation united in the banks;
      the banks themselves combined into cartels; the investment
      capital of the nation cast in the shape of securities. Then the
      forecast of that genius Saint-Simon will be fulfilled:
‘The
      present anarchy of production, which corresponds to the fact
      that economic relations are developing without uniform
      regulation, must make way for organisation in
      production. Production will no longer be directed by isolated
      manufacturers, independent of each other and ignorant of man’s
      economic needs; that will be done by a certain public
      institution. A central committee of management, being able to
      survey the large field of social economy from a more elevated
      point of view, will regulate it for the benefit of the whole of
      society, will put the means of production into suitable hands,
      and above all will take care that there be constant harmony
      between production and consumption. Institutions already exist
      which have assumed as part of their functions a certainorganisation of economic labour, the banks.’  We are still a
      long way from the fulfilment of Saint-Simon’s forecast, but we
      are on the way towards it: Marxism, different from what Marx
      imagined, but different only in
form.”[1]

A crushing “refutation” of Marx indeed, which retreats a step
      from Marx’s precise, scientific analysis to Saint-Simon’s
      guess-work, the guess-work of a genius, but guess-work all the
      same.

[1]Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, S. 146.
—Lenin